What’s in a hunch? Or a book or a poem?

‘When the notes weren’t enough, they set up video cameras in living rooms. “This is about the most boring footage you can imagine,” West says. “It’s movies of mopping, for God’s sake.’ (See below).

I’ve been thinking about something for awhile – when a video clip on youtube goes viral, takes peoples breath away rather than making it difficult to breathe, makes you want to hit replay again and again… it’s because it’s compressed time and life in a tiny little capsule.

That music video that blows your mind? It’s 50 different tracks of the same song. 5 different settings. Hours and hours of footage compressed into 5 minutes. 5 minutes of the best tracks, the best takes, the best camera angles, changing every 2 seconds (that’s the average clip on a finished professional video reel), the most dynamic emotional moments from the weeks and months of preparation and hours or days of raw footage. But what you get is 5 minutes.

The better time lapses? 10 or more hours of footage in a matter of seconds.

The note the famous musician holds in the air in a stadium so silent you can hear a pin drop? YEARS of practice. Years and years of years. And you get to hear the single beautiful result. You’re not paying to hear 1 hour of the prodigy’s time.

You’re paying to hear the results of 25+ years of practice and preparation.

Financial adviser and millionaire Dave Ramsey was once challenged by a listener about his radio show. “I mean how long does it take for you to prepare for one of your shows anyway?” Dave Ramsey was asked. “I’ve been preparing for 35 years,” was his answer.

In case you think he means for every episode, you might want to check out this youtube clip:

Scientists tell us that hunches are not actually hunches. 5 year olds don’t often have hunches. Amateurs don’t have them. A hunch is born of 20 years of experience in the same narrow field. Your brain is going at a lightning speed you can not even keep up with: processing data, years of facts, years of cause and effect, years of experience and eye-witness accounts. It tells you, “No, not this way, that way.”

And when you have a hunch after all that experience? You’d better listen to it.

For the few of us who read poetry, when we read a poem that transports you to a different world or completely transcends the ordinary, it is because the author has gone through something that has taken years to process, to experience, or to understand. And then one day, she writes a poem, or a song, or, given enough time, a book.

The best books are built on lifetimes of experience.

After you’ve done your due diligence to research and  compare and create charts and feed information into your brain when researching a new subject, step away from it. Step away from the data and facts for a day, or a few days, depending on the size and scope of the project. And then make your decision. Let the information form a conclusion in your head. And when you’ve made the decision, trust it.

*The quote at the beginning of the article? It’s from Jonah Lehrer’s book, “Imagine.” And it’s about the weeks and years proceeding the invention of the first Swiffer-like mop.